Fostering a Dialogue for International Understanding
Edited by the ACRL Student Learning and Information Literacy Committee, Global Perspectives on Information Literacy Working Group
With a Foreword by Emma Coonan
ACRL is a division of the American Library Association. © 2017 Association of College &
Research Libraries. This work is issued under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial license CC BY-NC 3.0; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.
Citation: Association of College and Research Libraries. Working Group on Global
Perspectives for Information Literacy, Student Learning and Information Literacy Committee.
Global Perspectives on Information Literacy: Fostering a Dialogue for International Understanding. Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2017.
We would like to thank Mikkel Skinner, graphic designer at Utah State University Merill-Cazier Library, for designing the cover of the white paper.
978-0-8389-8964-7
[Corrections made June 9, 2017]
http://acrl.libguides.com/slilc/home
#acrlglobalinfolit
I. Executive Summary ... 5 II. Introduction ... 9 III. Foreword by Emma Coonan, Information Skills Librarian, ...13
University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, United Kingdom IV. Chapters
A. Dr. Noa Aharony, Head, Department of Information ...17 Science, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
B. William Badke, Associate Librarian, Associated Canadian Theological ...22 Schools and Information Literacy, Trinity Western University, Langley,
British Columbia, Canada
C. Cara Bradley, Liaison Services Coordinator, ...29 University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
D. Sophie Bury, Head, Bronfman Business Library, ...36 York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
E. Dr. Daniel G. Dorner, Information Management Consultant, ...47 Wellington, New Zealand
F. Dr. Jesús Lau, Director, Professor and Advisor to the General ...60 Directorate of Academic Development and Education Innovation, Universidad Veracruzana, Veracruz Campus, Boca del Río, Veracruz, México
G. Andrew Mwesigwa, Academic Librarian and Head, Digitisation/Repository ...69 Section, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, East Africa
H. Dr. Jaya Raju, Associate Professor and Head, Library and Information ...77 Studies Centre, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa and Dr.
Reggie Raju, Deputy Director, Research & Learning, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
I. Elizabeth A. Russell, Head, Center for Digital Scholarship, New York ...87 University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and Meggan
Houlihan, First Year Experience and Instruction Librarian, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
J. Dr. Jane Secker, Copyright and Digital Literacy Advisor, London School of...99 Economics and Political Science, England, United Kingdom
K. Dr. Sonja Špiranec, Associate Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences, ... 110 Department of Information & Communication Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
L. Dr. Maria-Carme Torras, Library Director, University of Bergen, ... 121 Bergen, Norway
M. Dr. Li Wang, Learning Support Services Manager, University ... 130 of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
V. Reflection ... 145 VI. Author Biographies ... 150 VII. Acknowledgements ... 156
Executive Summary
Information literacy is a concept without geographic boundaries in librarianship. Across the world, academic librarians work toward developing students’ abilities to effectively find,
evaluate, use, and create information. The approach to teaching these lifelong, cumulative skills can be designed in myriad ways throughout our global environment. This work seeks to share individual international perspectives that, through a unique voice, provide clarity toward how information literacy is viewed, taught, conceptualized, and, in general, approached
internationally. The individual voices of our authors provide perspective on the unique challenges and opportunities presented in each region.
Africa
Mwesigwa, of Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, Africa, explains that in East Africa, information literacy is taught as a stand-alone course and is integrated into the curriculum. He emphasizes the need for instruction librarian training in this region and highlights Makerere University and University of Nairobi as centers for excellence and hubs for information literacy instructional practice. Yet, he notes, there are challenges to information literacy integration overall, including a “rigid institutional culture” and a reticence to acknowledge information literacy as an educational priority in higher education.
Like Dorner in his chapter on Asia/Oceania, Raju and Raju, looking at South Africa, agree that information literacy must be centered within an appropriate social context. They share sobering literacy statistics, including a 70 percent illiteracy rate for Grade 3 learners in their region. Against this backdrop, Raju and Raju insist that South Africans must be self-directed learners who use information literacy skills to contribute to their area’s socioeconomic
development. In the same vein, the authors see a need for academic librarians to adopt a more proactive stance as educators and instructional collaborators.
Asia/Oceania
Dorner notes in his chapter that the Asia/Oceania region is comprised of over sixty-one countries, including China and India, and in that respect defies a concise overview. Like Bradley in her description of information literacy needs of Canadian indigenous populations, Dorner asserts that information literacy models have been primarily created for use in developed countries and are grounded in Western thought and social structures. With Gorman, he developed an information literacy program model for developing countries, specifying that in order to be effective, a program must consider and address the cultural context within
students’ learning environment. Dorner questions whether Western models, such as the ACRL Standards and Framework, are suitable for use in Asian cultures.
Wang details the Research Skill Development Framework (RSDF) in use in New Zealand higher education. RSDF was developed as an outgrowth of the ANZIIL (Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy framework[1]), which in turn was inspired by the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Wang created a model of information literacy curriculum integration influenced by the RSDF. This model draws upon the
“what, who, and how” of information literacy curriculum integration and can be used to map information literacy programmatic impact. Wang notes that information literacy is well integrated into higher education curricula throughout New Zealand and Australia and that future developments in this region include a greater focus on building student skills with regard to future employability.
Europe
Secker describes the United Kingdom’s rich information literacy history, beginning with the development of the SCONUL Seven Pillars of Information Literacy, created in 1999 and updated in 2011. The 2011 version incorporated not just skills, but also information literacy attitudes and behaviors, influencing the focus of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher
Education. Secker and Emma Coonan’s 2011 model, A New Curriculum for Information Literacy (ANCIL), places learners at the center of the information literacy landscape and has also been an influential document. The United Kingdom’s professional librarian association, Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), began to address information literacy in the 2000s, through the organization as well as the LILAC (Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference), beginning in 2004. Advocacy continues in the United Kingdom, primarily through CILIP’s Information Literacy Group (ILG), including a forthcoming update of the 2004 CILIP definition of information literacy.
Writing and information literacy are intertwined in Norway, notes Torras. The online tutorial Search and Write advocates for a holistic melding of the two, and there is also close collaboration between writing centers and academic libraries. Torras also details NORDPLUS, a collaborative group devoted to enhancing the role of the academic library in Norwegian higher education. As was evident in Secker’s UK chapter, information literacy in Norway is accepted (although Torras notes that information literacy assessment is not common) and a part of the Norwegian higher education student experience.
Špiranec of Croatia offers a different European perspective, reminding readers that Europe itself is divided by a Western perspective that is primarily democratic and capitalist and an Eastern perspective that is more transitional and postsocialist. The environment is critical in the interpretation and instruction deployment of information literacy. Špiranec argues that a more traditional approach to information literacy simply does not work in a more volatile and post- conflict area like Croatia. Critical information literacy (CIL), with its focus on social issues, has more relevance and traction. Špiranec states, “in post-conflict and transitional societies like Croatia and many other countries from the region, multiperspectiveness, as promoted within CIL, seems pertinent for societal reconciliation, reconstruction, and the building of more tolerant pluralistic societies” (p. 114). This inclusion of broader social issues within the context of information literacy lays the path for adoption of information literacy within the higher education curriculum.
Latin America
Lau discusses the Mexican information literacy standards, Normas sobre alfabetización informativa en educación superior. These standards were written to reflect Mexican educational
priorities, yet were also crafted to provide relevant content to the larger international
information literacy community. Mexican librarians also find guidance from the IFLA Guidelines on Information Literacy for Lifelong Learning, which Lau participated in crafting. Lau notes that there is still much work to be done with regard to information literacy in Mexico, integrating it within the basic education curriculum, as well as higher education. In his words, “México needs citizens skilled in information to contribute and benefit from the world’s knowledge output” (p.
64).
Middle East
In the Middle East, Aharony shares her study of Israeli librarians’ perceptions of information literacy, finding that librarians in that region view the concept as one under the purview of the library, rather than one that should be taught by faculty. In recognition of people crossing borders and adopting new cultures, she also emphasizes the growing need for librarians to consider the mobility of information literacy throughout an individual’s life as they change jobs and adjust to new environments.
Russell and Houlihan cover the development of Western-style university campuses in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. These new campuses bring with them a Western-centered focus on student learning, complemented by “expat” faculty hired from abroad. This has shaped the face of information literacy in the region to one that is very focused on documents such as the ACRL Standards. The authors point out a disconnect, however, between the K–12
educational systems in the region and the transnational campuses. They recognize a need for a cohesive approach to information literacy in the region that recognizes local needs. Establishing a national library association and local chapters could help support this information-literacy- community-building imperative.
North America
In his chapter on Canadian information literacy, Badke admits that after much effort placed on integrating information literacy into the curriculum, “the task of information literacy needs to be turned over largely to disciplinary faculty, guided by the information literacy expertise of librarians” (p. 24). Badke also notes the very collaborative nature of Canadians, yet points out
“Canadian information literacy remains a practice without a central document to define it and without a central body to govern it” (p. 25).
In Saskatchewan, Bradley discusses the significance of the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (C-EBLIP), based in Saskatoon at the University of Saskatchewan. The Centre, informed by research practices in evidence-based medicine, asks librarians to mine research questions from their own practice and has resulted in multiple evidence-based, information-literacy-focused Canadian studies. Bradley also discusses Canada’s significant indigenous population and the rise of information literacy instruction tailored to the learning needs of that specific audience, including questioning “Euro-centric frames” for categorizing information in favor of those that may exist closer to the lens of indigenous populations. Sophie Bury, at York University in Toronto, highlights the work of Canadian information literacy researchers, including Gloria Leckie’s work on faculty information literacy practices, Bill Badke’s
explorations of barriers to faculty engagement with information literacy, Heidi Julien’s work on information literacy instruction, and Heidi Jacobs’s research on critical information literacy, all influenced by a Canadian emphasis on (in Bury’s words), “alternative pedagogies rooted in problem-posing approaches where information is recognized as being situated in disciplinary contexts where power relationships come into play” (p. 40).
The diverse voices in this white paper show the influence of culture, politics, and
community on information literacy integration within higher education. While Western thought has resulted in established information literacy models in the US, the United States, New Zealand/Australia, and Canada, other developing regions find their articulation of information literacy more frequently shaped by social issues. Critical information literacy is identified as a relevant model for developing countries and post-conflict areas. Across all of the chapters, a commitment to student learning, to helping students gain information literacy and lifelong learning abilities, remains at the forefront throughout our world.
Note
[1] Alan Bundy, ed., Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Framework, 2nd ed. (Adelaide: Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy, 2004), http://www.caul.edu.au/content/upload/files/info- literacy/InfoLiteracyFramework.pdf.
Introduction
Origins and Goal
As one of ACRL’s four strategic goal area committees, the Student Learning and Information Literacy Committee (SLILC) contributes to the ACRL Plan for Excellence
(http://www.ala.org/acrl/aboutacrl/strategicplan/stratplan) by working toward this strategic goal:
“Librarians transform student learning, pedagogy, and instructional practices through creative and innovative collaborations.”[1] As a result, in the winter of 2015, the SLILC convened a subset of its membership, the Global Perspectives on Information Literacy Working Group, to explore “transform[ing] student learning” through the creation of new and “innovative
collaborations.” The idea for a white paper examining global perspectives of information literacy comes from a recognition of the need to build understanding for how information literacy is represented around the world and how it is enacted across and between cultures. The Working Group included representatives from SLILC, the ACRL Instruction Section, the
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) Information Literacy Group in the United Kingdom, and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Information Literacy Section. Members drew upon their personal and professional experiences, such as attending international conferences, working abroad, and engaging with global librarianship to bear on the project.
Global Perspectives on Information Literacy: Fostering a Dialogue for International Understanding brings together a variety of librarian voices across cultures into a single document. We aspire to spark a conversation among US and international academic librarians by connecting varied approaches to information literacy in order to gain a better understanding of how librarians are promoting student learning through information literacy across cultures.
Structure and Author Selection
Over the past year and a half, the Working Group had several inquiry-driven conversations about global librarianship. The scope of these conversations spanned several broad questions (e.g., What is global? What is information literacy?) to specific observations, practices, and professional roles of librarians. One of our members shared an observation that given budget constraints, many US librarians do not have the opportunity to attend international conferences and therefore may be missing opportunities to discuss information literacy issues on a global level. Another member, who has presented at international conferences, wondered how students across the globe are supported in higher education and how faculty collaborate with librarians in other cultures. Other questions we considered: How is higher education structured outside of the United States and how does that impact information literacy? What trends in information literacy theory and practice are most impactful? What do our colleagues around the globe see as future trends around information literacy? These questions and many others drove our curiosity to understand the forces that impact and shape information literacy in other cultures. We worked to design a white paper that could increase exposure to international perspectives on
information literacy.
Structure
To strike a balance between openness and constraints for our authors, we decided on a semi-structured template approach. We wanted authors to write about information literacy from a personal perspective and to discuss major research trends, models, practices, and the librarian’s role in teaching information literacy around the world. Knowing that no author can encapsulate all aspects of information literacy for a region of the world, we provided questions outlined in a template to construct a narrative informed by the information literacy culture in which each author works. We provided authors the following outline that included a mix of required questions and the freedom to choose from suggested topics:
I. Introduction: Describe your work with information literacy and your role with information literacy during your career. Who are you and why are you here? This could be a place to highlight personal research.
II. Choose 2 of 4 topics that best reflect your personal and professional landscape:
a. Research Trends: What kind of information literacy–related research is being done in your country or region that has impacted your approach to teaching? What are the enduring research questions that have influenced your role as a teacher? Are there trends in methodologies being used to answer research questions? What can librarians from around the world learn from what is being done in your region?
b. Models of Information Literacy: What standards/frameworks/models/learning theory/pedagogy or specific paradigms do you most often use for inspiration in your teaching? Why do you turn to these models? What makes them useful?
(Note: This could include models from other countries and could reflect the dominant perspective from your region and/or your individual perspective.) c. Theory and Practice = Praxis: Describe the connection between information
literacy and student learning from your position or perspective. What is your teaching philosophy? How do you use theory to improve student learning in your classroom?
d. The Role of Librarians: Describe librarian education in your country or region.
What is the role of librarians in the higher education landscape of your country or region? How were you trained to become a teaching librarian? How do you gain professional development in your area?
III. Future Visioning and Reflection: Where do you imagine information literacy will be in your country/region in the next five to ten years? Why? What evidence do you have to demonstrate this? What are the key challenges in your position (please highlight
concrete examples)? What will it take to get there? Feel free to use the literature to back up your main points.
Author Selection
We used a variety of methods to identify experts on information literacy from around the world. We began our search for authors by relying on personal knowledge and connections
through conferences we had attended, such as European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) and the Annual International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) conference, through our wide variety of service on committees, and through a review of the literature. During an exhaustive literature search, we focused particularly on regions that had little or no representation on our expanding list of possible authors. In some areas where we had multiple authors as possibilities, we invited authors to write their section collaboratively.
For example, our Canadian authors consulted together to complement and align their chapters.
There were challenges in identifying authors for this paper, both for the Working Group and for the authors. The most significant constraint for this project was selecting authors who were able to write fluently in English; this limited the pool of potential authors, but ensured that the ACRL membership would be able to engage fully with the white paper. While readers will benefit from the notes and references to scholars and practitioners from other regions with whom many may be unfamiliar, the references are largely in English, which reminds us that we are often limited in our perspective by language. Defining and choosing regions to represent was also a challenge, as we knew we would be unable to represent all regions, cultures, and information literacy perspectives in a single document. Furthermore, while the instructions emphasized the limitations, the authors acknowledged the difficulty of writing a perspective representing an entire region. We acknowledge there are many other voices that could be included in this white paper, and we hope the ensuing conversation will encourage additional perspectives to the forefront while connecting more of us together. In the end, the authors contributing to this white paper are a mix of theorists and practitioners from various regions of the world—Africa, Canada, Europe, Oceania, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East—
reflecting a broad and diverse set of voices that begin to open a dialogue on how librarians approach the difficult task of increasing student learning.
As we delve into the conversation, we hope you will join us in striving to expand our understandings of information literacy in an international context. As you engage in your own research and work to improve your practice, we challenge you to broaden your reading to include international titles and to extend your engagement in the IL community by reaching out to teaching librarians around the world. Finally, as you read the contributions, we invite you to reflect on how these voices impact and enrich our understanding of teaching theory and practice.
ACRL Student Learning and Information Literacy Committee, Global Perspectives on Information Literacy Working Group
Merinda Kaye Hensley, Chair of ACRL Student Learning and Information Literacy Committee (SLILC), 2015–2016, and Chair of SLILC Global Perspectives on Information Literacy, 2015–
2017
Nicole E. Brown, Member of ACRL SLILC, 2015–2017
Ellysa Cahoy, Past Chair of ACRL Instruction Section, 2015–2016 Alan Carbery, Member of ACRL SLILC, 2015–2017
Rhonda Huisman, Chair of ACRL SLILC, 2016–2017 Kacy Lundstrom, Member of ACRL SLILC, 2015–2017
Sharon Mader, Chair of International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Information Literacy Section, 2013–2017
Jane Secker, Chair of Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) Information Literacy Group, United Kingdom, 2015–2018, and Member of International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Information Literacy Section, 2014–
2020
Julie Ann Garrison, ACRL Board Liaison, 2015–2016 Caroline Fuchs, ACRL Board Liaison, 2016–2017
Mary Jane Petrowski, ACRL Associate Director and Staff Liaison to SLILC
Note
[1] “ACRL Board of Directors’ Actions, January/February 2015: Highlights of the Board’s Midwinter Meetings,”
College and Research Libraries News 76, no. 3 (March 2015), http://crln.acrl.org/content/76/3/128.full.
FOREWORD
Towards a Constructive Unbalancing: The Reflexive Turn in Information Literacy
Emma Coonan
A roar of indignation shook the room. Before the commotion had settled down another teacher had stuck his head in the door to see what the trouble was.
“It’s all right,” Phaedrus said. “We just accidentally stumbled over a genuine question, and the shock is hard to recover from.”[1]
The last two decades have seen a shift in the most fundamental issues of our concern. This transformation can be traced in the thought patterns, concepts, and metaphors through which we see our practice as teaching or instruction librarians and which in turn structure it. Above all, it manifests in a relinquishment, however reluctant, of a monolithic or absolutist vision of information literacy as a singular, constant, and stably definable state, in favour of a relational and embodied phenomenon in which the individual’s unique context and connections are of paramount importance.[2] This white paper highlights both the multiplicity of those contexts and the global interconnections between our divergent experiences.
The monolithic vision of IL is grounded in a belief that there are comprehensive and universally applicable standards both for information behaviour and information competency:
“right ways” of using information,[3] and measurable levels of attainment in doing so. This idea of a universal form of IL that could be not only identified, but also taught and assessed, seemed to take root early on in IL’s forty-year history. Corporate definitions and models anatomised the encounter with information into a linear process with a defined end point and mandated an order and a method in which that process should be carried out. The trajectory carried the learner from need identification through searching and locating, through evaluating to citing, and thus to the end of the transaction—as though IL were a convergent force designed to uncover a singular, final answer.
Despite the unyielding solidity of the models, many IL practitioners found the reality of their teaching to be far more fluid, uncovering multiple legitimate approaches to research problems, contradictory yet valid interpretations of evidence, and instances like the one above where, together with our learners, we stumbled over questions to which we could not immediately—
or perhaps ever—find stable solutions. We learned that knowledge itself is less about acquiring definitive answers and ways of doing, and more about participating in a dynamic, socially
constructed, and endlessly developing work.
Our certainties have been called into question; our equilibrium has been disturbed, perhaps beyond recovery—and we are, I believe, the better for it.
In our own understanding and practice, our roles as information literacy librarians are no longer about guiding students to the “right” resource, and we can no longer position ourselves as mediators, connectors, gatekeepers, or kindly sages.[4] Our use is not in pointing out the right route to academic information, but in exploring and enacting as part of a learning
community the various ways in which knowledge in any domain may be framed, analysed, interpreted, questioned, communicated, and lived. This evolution is captured in the
terminological shift from “user education”—something done to learners by librarians—to the language used by the authors in this paper to position their work: curriculum integration, academic development, situated practice.
This growing awareness of the contextual and co-constructed nature of information, reflected in the ACRL’s movement from “standards” to a negotiated “framework,”[5] allows us to recognise the connections between IL and learning. Once we begin to understand learning as
“a qualitative change in a person’s way of seeing . . . rather than a change in the amount of knowledge which someone possesses,”[6] we perceive that, as a constituent part of the process of learning, IL is not merely additive but transformative. Admitting the validity of information that challenges or contradicts our beliefs, and revising our stance accordingly, is a crucial element of transformative learning and personal development. Thus, engaging in critical
encounters with information changes more than the learner’s understanding: it also changes the learner, perhaps profoundly.
As a result, this shift towards a more questioning, relational view of IL inescapably brings with it a destabilising of the “ownership” of IL. Within the absolutist vision of IL as a set of universally defined competencies, it is librarians who articulate what information literacy looks like, assess whether learners have met the required standard, and graciously confer the status of “information literate.” But once we recognise the transformational nature of the encounter between the individual and information, the agency passes from the librarian to the learner.
Once we understand that the value of information varies according to the context within which it is used, we also recognise that it is the individual who is best placed to decide whether and how to deploy that information to make it serve their needs within that context. Rather than a skill conferred by professionals, we begin to see IL as a state of mind, like Bruner’s description of academic disciplines as “less repositories of knowledge than . . . methods for the use of mind.”[7] From this perspective, information literacy is a critical lens through which we interact with the world and make meaning of it; a way of seeing, and therefore a way of being.
To relinquish the reassuring conception of IL as a “prescriptive enumeration of skills”[8] that is the occupation and the proper preserve of the library may seem a loss to mourn. Yet if we let go of this idea of our practice as a skill set uniquely propounded by librarians and start to see it instead as a “cluster of interconnected . . . concepts,”[9] part of a larger enterprise whose purpose is both to educate and to discover, we gain something greater: partnership in a
community engaged in the construction of knowledge.
Good teachers don’t just do; they are. They model ways of being, approaches and mind sets, that can help learners to decide who and how they want to be. Our role as information literacy practitioners is not to describe a critical relationship with information, but to enact it: to model what an approach based on critical appraisal and discernment, on asking questions, on weighing evidence, on probing arguments, statistics, and claims, looks like, not only in the academic arena but in everyday life.
Adopting this role brings with it one other disconcerting responsibility: to apply as far as we
can the same critical gaze to the underpinning values of our own practice. This movement, which is broadly labelled critical information literacy, represents a reflexive turn in IL thinking which argues that as educators we are inescapably involved in an unequal power structure whose greatest achievement may be the pretence of being innate. Our choice is either to accept or to question that structure: we cannot remove ourselves from it, to criticise it from a position of objectivity. “Neutrality is not an option.”[10]
This reflexive position disconcerts once again our achieved beliefs and erodes even the provisional securities of our reflective practice. But, again, that loss of certainty and comfort is compensated for by the possibility of a greater integrity, a deeper insight, and a new awareness of our place as learners and inquirers within a wider community of practice, one which consists of an intersecting set of communities such as that modelled in this work.
The work does not end with the abjuring of our neutrality. Rather, it is from that unstable point that it begins. Radical commitment to a vision of IL that embraces uncertainty, multiple viewpoints, and unfixed knowledge may still be reappropriated by a more determinate position, petrified by institutional pressures, brought to a standstill by economic imperatives surrounding the university (such as ever-increasing calls to demonstrate value through quantitative
measures). To maintain our commitment to openness, contingency, pushing beyond “right answers,” we need the support and provocation of our peers. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community of practice to maintain a reflective information literacy practitioner: a librarian capable of embracing uncertainty and of turning an unfearing questioning gaze on their own identity and entitlement.
Notes
[1] Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (London: Bodley Head, 1974), 205.
[2] Christine Bruce, Sylvia Edwards, and Mandy Lupton, “Six Frames for Information Literacy Education: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting the Relationships between Theory And Practice,” Innovation in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences 5, no. 1 (2006): 1–18,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.11120/ital.2006.05010002; Annemaree Lloyd, “Information Literacy Landscapes: An Emerging Picture,” Journal of Documentation 62, no. 5 (2006): 570–83,
doi:10.1108/00220410610688723.
[3] Andrew Whitworth, “Communicative Competence in the Information Age: Towards a Critical Theory of Information Literacy Education,” Innovation in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences 5, no.
1 (2006): 1–13, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.11120/ital.2006.05010007.
[4] Andrew Walsh and Emma Coonan, eds., Only Connect . . . (Huddersfield, UK: Innovative Libraries, 2013), 8–9.
[5] Association of College and Research Libraries, Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016),
http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework.
[6] Ference Marton and Paul Ramsden, “What Does It Take to Improve Learning?” in Improving Learning: New Perspectives, ed. Paul Ramsden (London: Kogan Page, 1988), 271.
[7] Jerome Bruner, The Process of Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), quoted in Noel Entwistle, Teaching for Understanding at University (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 1.
[8] Association of College and Research Libraries, Framework.
[9] Ibid.
[10] James Elmborg, “Critical Information Literacy: Implications for Instructional Practice,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 32, no. 2 (March 2006): 193, doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2005.12.004.
Bibliography
Association of College and Research Libraries. Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Chicago:
Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016. http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework.
Bruce, Christine, Sylvia Edwards, and Mandy Lupton. “Six Frames for Information Literacy Education: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting the Relationships between Theory and Practice.” Innovation in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences 5, no. 1 (2006): 1–18.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.11120/ital.2006.05010002.
Elmborg, James. “Critical Information Literacy: Implications for Instructional Practice.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 32, no. 2 (March 2006): 192–99. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2005.12.004.
Entwistle, Noel. Teaching for Understanding at University: Deep Approaches and Distinctive Ways of Thinking.
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Lloyd, Annemaree. “Information Literacy Landscapes: An Emerging Picture.” Journal of Documentation 62, no. 5 (2006): 570–83. doi:10.1108/00220410610688723.
Marton, Ference, and Paul Ramsden. “What Does It Take to Improve Learning?” In Improving Learning: New Perspectives, ed. Paul Ramsden, 268–8. London: Kogan Page, 1988.
Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. London: Bodley Head, 1974.
Walsh, Andrew, and Emma Coonan, eds. Only Connect . . . : Discovery Pathways, Library Explorations and the Information Adventure. Huddersfield, UK: Innovative Libraries, 2013.
Whitworth, Andrew. “Communicative Competence in the Information Age: Towards a Critical Theory of Information Literacy Education.” Innovation in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences 5, no. 1 (2006): 1–13. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.11120/ital.2006.05010007.
CHAPTER A
Dr. Noa Aharony
Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel Region: Middle East
Introduction
I am an associate professor in the Department of Information Science at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. I came to the information science field from education, and particularly from educational technology. The combination of educational technology and information science enables me to gain a comprehensive understanding of the information literacy issue. I have taught the
information literacy course since 2000. For the first ten years, I taught master’s students, and in the last six years, undergraduates. The focus of the course has changed during the years. When I taught graduate students, I concentrated on the broad perspective of information literacy (e.g., learning theories and psychological characteristics such as cognitive styles), as well as on
information literacy skills and techniques that students should have as librarians or information professionals who serve their clients. Now that I teach undergraduate students, I focus on information literacy skills and principles they should acquire and understand for future academic studies.
The topic of information literacy is crucial all over the world, as we live in an era of information abundance, and each one of us has to be information literate in his or her professional as well as personal life. Individuals should know how to search for information, how to evaluate it, and how to present it. There is no doubt that the topic of information literacy is in the focus of librarians, information professionals, and educators in Israel; however, only a few studies focusing on information literacy have been conducted in Israel.
A study I conducted in 2010, “Information Literacy in the Professional Literature: An Exploratory Analysis,” reviewed various publications dealing with information literacy and the emerging trends reflected over the period 1999–2009 in the Web of Science database.[1] The main results suggest that the term information literacy has various characteristics in an additional and interesting context: health and medicine. This finding may reflect a tendency to associate information literacy and health and medicine and stresses people’s need for information literacy in that context. The study emphasizes that information literacy is no longer an issue for
librarians or educators only.
Another study I conducted with my colleague Jenny Bronstein in 2013, “Academic Librarians’ Perceptions on Information Literacy: The Israeli Perspective,” seeks to explore Israeli librarians’ perspectives towards major components of information literacy.[2] Do
librarians find there is a need to redefine the concept? Who do they think should teach it? How do they think Web 2.0 platforms and social networks influence the concept of information literacy? The study used an online survey and data analysis consisting of quantitative and qualitative phases. Findings revealed that, in general, Israeli librarians see little or no need to
revise the traditional definition of information literacy, even though they expand it when including Web 2.0 and digital literacy characteristics within its scope. In addition, respondents think it is more a library role than a faculty role to teach information literacy, and they view positively the possibility of integrating Web 2.0 platforms into information literacy courses.
A third study conducted by Hadas Gur and me in 2015, concentrated on the question of whether personal characteristics such as openness to experience, curiosity, learning strategies, self-efficacy, and technology skills are associated with information literacy level among Israeli undergraduate students in their first year at the university.[3] Results showed that the older students are, the more open they are to experiences and being curious, the higher their computer skills and self-efficacy, the more deeply they learn, and the higher their information literacy level. Thus, personal characteristics, as well as age and computer skills, affect students’
level of information literacy.
The Role of Librarians
In Israel, there are two tracks to becoming a librarian. The first is to study at a university and get a first or second degree in library and information science. The second is to study at a college and receive a professional librarian certificate. In order to become an academic librarian, one should have a second degree in LIS.
Not long ago, Israeli students from different disciplines (not LIS) encountered information literacy in various ways. They had to take a course titled, “Library Instruction,” “Bibliographic Instruction,” or “Information Literacy,” where they first heard about the meaning and
importance of information literacy. There were different ways to study this subject. In some institutions, students had to take a one-semester course on campus, and in others, it was limited to four or five meetings on campus.
However, this has changed, and the IL course is now delivered only online as a distance course. In most institutions, this instruction is basic and theoretical. Students should follow some modules and then take an exam at the end. Usually, the undergraduates who have to write seminar papers ask the librarian for further, more advanced instruction. Students would like to know how to perform advanced searches on the Internet as well as in professional databases. In these cases the librarian shows them the principles of advanced searching. In the case of graduate students, when they have to write their theses they also turn to the librarian in order to show them more sophisticated search techniques. In addition, there are certain
professors from different departments that ask the librarian to enter their classes and explain to their students how to cope with the information overload and how to search effectively on the Internet and in professional databases. In most cases, librarians usually do not follow any official standards or the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, but rather try to focus on students’ or professors’ requirements.
Library directors claim that librarians are not familiar with, or experienced in, teaching and lack teaching methods, and thus have difficulties in teaching and instructing their users. In order to facilitate this process, library directors offer workshops so that librarians can learn
instructional and methodological techniques. Before instructing students, librarians should
deliver a lesson in front of their colleagues and learn where they should improve. Only if they succeed in this phase can they instruct students. However, librarians still feel that they are not well-prepared for this mission and would like to improve their skills. In reality, even though training workshops are offered, few librarians take part in them.
Concerning Israeli librarians’ professional development in general, and information literacy in particular, it seems that they are eager to broaden their horizons. There is one professional organization—ASMI (Association of Israeli Librarians and Information Professionals)—that offers advanced courses for librarians’ development. In addition, there are several conferences, such as the public libraries conference or Teldan Information Systems conference each year, that librarians can attend. However, Israeli librarians claim they would like to take more courses and professional advanced studies in order to improve and become better librarians who master the newest technological tools as well as pedagogically useful ones. They add that their opportunities to expand their skills and knowledge are limited (because of time and budget limitations), and they would like to attend more conferences or courses. In my opinion, I am quite sure that because of the economic limitations the situation won’t be better in the near future.
Models of Information Literacy
Israel does not have its own standards or frameworks for information literacy, and
librarians rely mostly on the ACRL Standards for Information Literacy for Higher Education. While not specific to the Israeli experience, two major current learning theories associated with information literacy are most used in Israel: constructivism and connectivism.[4] I prefer the constructivist theory as one to use when teaching IL to my undergraduate or graduate students.
The constructivist approach proposes that individuals construct knowledge and skills upon their previously existing constructs based on their experiences. In other words, the individual brings to the learning situation already-acquired knowledge, and that knowledge has a strong influence upon how the learner constructs meaning and acquires new knowledge. Further, constructivist theory contends that the process of knowledge acquisition and creation should be active in order to become stored in long-term memory. Instructors who follow the constructivist approach use teaching techniques such as inquiry-based learning, discovery learning, and problem-based learning—activities that focus on learners who take active roles in the learning process. The instructors serve as facilitators or guides. The literature (e.g.,
Gradowski, Snavely, and Dempsey[5]) emphasizes the relevance of active learning, a central tenet of constructivist learning theory, to information literacy instruction. Oakleaf and VanScoy note that learning takes place when individuals participate in activities and problem solving.[6] I find the best learning happens when students try to solve problems, reflect upon their experience, and describe their search or learning process—in other words, when they have activities that make them become engaged in their learning.
Another theoretical framework that can help us understand information literacy teaching is connectivism.[7] In the context of IL, this approach posits that learning takes place when learners make connections between ideas that are found on their personal learning networks and are composed of information resources and technologies. Thus, the individual makes connections
between concepts, opinions, and perspectives that are accessed through Internet technologies such as electronic databases, web search engines, and online information resources.[8] Students acquire skills that should be leveraged and, as a result, will be able to see libraries and library resources as parts of their learning networks.
In my own teaching, I use constructivism in designing the instruction course for
undergraduate students. For example, when discussing information evaluation on the Internet, I present different criteria for information evaluation, and afterwards I give students different sites to explore and evaluate. At first, they are asked to work alone and examine the sites.
Then they are divided into groups and discuss their evaluations and reach a group decision. This activity causes students to be active and engaged in their learning tasks.
Future Visioning and Reflection
Addressing the future of information literacy in the coming five to ten years, I expect there will be a great change concerning the role of information literacy in the twenty-first-century information society. More and more people will understand that IL is a lifelong learning skill and will acknowledge its importance, effects, and implications on different aspects of our everyday life.
As a result, information literacy will no longer be the sole focus of librarians, information professionals, or educators. Rather, it will become a crucial general characteristic of this time.
Consequently, people will probably associate IL with other disciplines, such as medicine and health, or workplaces.[9] As Hicks and Lloyd noted, an information-literate person will be one who knows how to develop a workplace identity, work collaboratively, and participate in a collaborative setting. Such a person will be in higher demand than one who has developed only a set of general skills.[10]
Another consideration is the role of information literacy in the transitional processes of those within new intercultural settings. As greater numbers of people shift from one place to another, habitual and familiar information practices may not work, and the individual has to create flexible information literacy practices to fit within different cultures. [11] Focusing on the Israeli perspective, Israel is a country whose population is combined of people who came, and still come, to their homeland from various parts of the world. Thus, these people confront new norms, habits, or culture, and they have to develop information literacy practices in order to survive and become an integrated part of the Israeli country and community. In addition, in Israel, we may see the same phenomenon that characterizes the entire world where individuals change workplaces during their lifetime, thus having to get accustomed to new customs and rules whenever they make a change. As a result, librarians and information professionals should understand that there is a great mobility in an individual’s life, and a person has to be
information literate in different cycles and places in his or her life. Therefore, rather than just focusing on library skills or on the library arena, librarians should expand information literacy training and consider it as broad, comprehensive practices that may help people adjust to new environments.
Notes
[1] Noa Aharony, “Information Literacy in the Professional Literature: An Exploratory Analysis,” Aslib Proceedings 62, no. 3 (2010): 261–82.
[2] Noa Aharony and Jenny Bronstein, “Academic Librarians’ Perceptions on Information Literacy: The Israeli Perspective,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 14, no. 1 (January 2014): 103–19.
[3] Noa Aharony and Hadas Gur, “The Effect of Personality, Perceptual, Cognitive and Technological Variables on Students’ Level of Information Literacy” (MA thesis, Bar Ilan University, 2016).
[4] Michelle Kathleen Dunaway, “Connectivism: Learning Theory and Pedagogical Practice for Networked Information Landscapes,” Reference Services Review 39, no. 4 (2011): 675–85.
[5] Gail Gradowski, Loanne Snavely, and Paula Dempsey, Designs for Active Learning (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 1998).
[6] Megan Oakleaf and Amy VanScoy, “Instructional Strategies for Digital Reference: Methods to Facilitate Student Learning,” Reference and User Services Quarterly 49, no. 4 (June 2010): 380–90.
[7] George Siemens, “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age,” elearnspace, December 12, 2004, last updated April 5, 2005, http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.
[8] Dunaway, “Connectivism.”
[9] Aharony, “Information Literacy.”
[10] Annemaree Lloyd, “Trapped between a Rock and a Hard Place: What Counts as Information Literacy in the Workplace and How Is It Conceptualized?” Library Trends 60, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 277–96.
[11] Alison Hicks and Annemaree Lloyd, “It Takes a Community to Build a Framework: Information Literacy within Intercultural Settings,” Journal of Information Science 42, no. 3 (2016): 334–43.
Bibliography
Aharony, Noa. “Information Literacy in the Professional Literature: An Exploratory Analysis.” Aslib Proceedings 62, no. 3 (2010): 261–82.
Aharony, Noa, and Jenny Bronstein. “Academic Librarians’ Perceptions on Information Literacy: The Israeli Perspective.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 14, no. 1 (January 2014): 103–19.
Aharony, Noa, and Hadas Gur. “The Effect of Personality, Perceptual, Cognitive and Technological Variables on Students’ Level of Information Literacy.” MA thesis, Bar Ilan University, 2016.
Dunaway, Michelle Kathleen. “Connectivism: Learning Theory and Pedagogical Practice for Networked Information Landscapes.” Reference Services Review 39, no. 4 (2011): 675–85.
Gradowski, Gail, Loanne Snavely, and Paula Dempsey. Designs for Active Learning: A Sourcebook of Classroom Strategies for Information Education. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 1998.
Hicks, Alison, and Annemaree Lloyd. “It Takes a Community to Build a Framework: Information Literacy within Intercultural Settings.” Journal of Information Science 42, no. 3 (2016): 334–43.
Lloyd, Annemaree. “Trapped between a Rock and a Hard Place: What Counts as Information Literacy in the Workplace and How Is It Conceptualized?” Library Trends 60, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 277–96.
Oakleaf, Megan, and Amy VanScoy. “Instructional Strategies for Digital Reference: Methods to Facilitate Student Learning.” Reference and User Services Quarterly 49, no. 4 (June 2010): 380–90.
Siemens, George. “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.” elearnspace. December 12, 2004, last updated April 5, 2005. http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.
CHAPTER B
William Badke
Trinity Western University, British Columbia, Canada Region: North America
Introduction
To provide a vision of information literacy within the context of a country as large as Canada is a challenging prospect. Canadian academic librarians have no singular stance on the definition, theory, or practices of information literacy, though there is a growing consensus that information literacy needs to be integrated within higher education curricula in collaboration with teaching faculty.[1]
My own involvement with information literacy came about almost accidentally. As an MLS graduate in 1985 and a new librarian, I had no idea that this obscure topic would consume so much of my time and energy. Yet information literacy has proven to be a fascinating and fruitful enterprise throughout my career. My defining moment came with a realization that, though I had earlier assumed that students possessed uniformly adequate research skills, I was mistaken.
To put it simply, students at all levels, beginning, undergraduate, and graduate, were showing themselves to be more or less lost in the task of research.
Further investigation proved that this was the case and that the problem was not isolated to my institution. Professors assumed that students learn how to do research by doing research, little provision was being made in the classroom for instruction in information and research skills, and students regularly turned in projects that were far below the standards hoped for by their teachers.
Since there was no consistent voice on information literacy from my colleagues in Canada at the time, I found most of my inspiration for addressing the “information literacy problem” in American, British, and Australian resources. I discovered, however, that in the mid-1980s there were few instruction models available to tell me how to proceed. Thus I ventured into
unknown territory, asking a sympathetic academic dean if I could create a research course required of all students in our small school that eventually affiliated with Trinity Western University. To my surprise, he accepted the proposal, and I became an instructor for an untried course, targeted to both undergraduate and graduate students in separate sections. Even more surprisingly, the course turned into a great success, both in recognition by our professors and in information literacy growth among students. I majored on using topics from research projects in other courses, and the assignments took students through the research process from topic selection to problem statements to finding and evaluating resources to writing the paper. At the graduate level, the course continues to this day in several sections, live and online.[2]
As the information literacy columnist for Online Searcher (formerly Online) since 2007 and the author of the widely used textbook, Research Strategies: Finding your Way through the
Information Fog,[3] as well as numerous articles, book chapters and a scholarly book, I have had ample opportunity to develop both theory and practice in support of furthering information literacy. Yet, though Canadian colleagues and institutions did not have a great deal of influence in my early journey, I find that there is a distinctly Canadian approach to the teaching and writing that I do.
Research Trends
Canadian higher education has several distinctions that have shaped its information literacy path. First, education at all levels is provincial, so there are no federal governing education policies. Second, there are many regional organizations that deal with various aspects of librarianship, but few national ones. The former Canadian Library Association is becoming a consortium of regional bodies, and other than a few organizations like the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians and Canadian Association of Research Libraries, a country- wide voice for issues like information literacy is lacking. Third, Canadian higher education is not accredited in the same sense as are colleges and universities in the United States. While there is a membership body for recognized universities (Universities Canada), the emphasis nationally and provincially is on “quality assurance” rather than accreditation, and there are few
regulatory standards. Fourth, Canada encompasses an enormous land mass, thus tending to regionalize most endeavors despite the easy availability of communication technology. Fifth, to the positive side, Canadians tend to be collaborative and to seek solutions to problems rather than building dividing walls.
Some elements of higher education in Canada might be seen as detriments, but they have allowed universities to shape their information literacy programs individually in creative ways, with opportunity for the kind of trial and error that often makes for genius in the end. Strongly informed by American efforts, and by two Canadian-based annual conferences—the Workshop for Instruction in Library Use (WILU) and the Augustana Information Literacy Workshop—
librarians across the country have been actively involved in information literacy work from the beginning of this movement.
Not that there has not been regret over the gap in national policies to improve information literacy across the country. Cara Bradley writes:
The relative lack of policy development in Canada and the scattered, incomplete nature of those policies that do exist, have left our country in the undesirable position of lagging behind many others in this area and failing to meet the information literacy-related policy goals outlined by organizations like UNESCO.[4]
Yet librarians and their corresponding faculty have not been inactive. Canada is home to a good number of innovative programs whose creativity, I believe, is enhanced by the absence of stringent requirements placed on institutions by outside regulators. Individual institutions are advancing their information literacy agendas, and provincial bodies are presenting educational outcome statements that carry information literacy language.
Many Canadian information literacy efforts are familiar ones, from one-shot sessions in classrooms to more embedded forms, to various online activities, to full-credit courses.
Canadian information professionals have developed, and are familiar with, all the forms of
information literacy available in other countries. Yet, in Canada, there has long been an urge to get information literacy more firmly into the curriculum, with major effort having been devoted for years to much more embedded forms of instruction,[5] despite the ongoing barriers.[6]
While the challenge of integrating information literacy into academic programs remains onerous—too few librarians to go around and too little interest from disciplinary faculty—it has also led to innovative work. Of particular note is the Augustana Campus Library of the University of Alberta, which since the late 1990s has offered corequisite research courses in multiple disciplines, with each being teamed with a disciplinary course. While this program is undergoing revision, it has provided a model for integration of information literacy instruction with university courses, such that term paper requirements for one can form the research skill development assignments for the other.[7]
Theory and Practice = Praxis
It has long been recognized in Canada that, as in other countries, the task of information literacy instruction is too large to be accomplished by the small number of academic librarians available in most institutions. As early as 2003, I argued that information literacy needed to be integrated into the curriculum, not as generic instruction, but in the form of robust, discipline- related credit courses.[8] Yet a program of such courses, if implemented throughout a college or university, would soon overwhelm the library staff, since there would only in rare cases be enough teaching librarians to meet such a goal.
Thus I have concluded that, despite the very large barriers to implementation, the task of information literacy needs to be turned over largely to disciplinary faculty, guided by the information literacy expertise of librarians.[9] The key to such integration comes from an understanding of disciplines, not as bodies of content, but as communities of practice. Every discipline embodies an epistemology (foundational sources of its knowledge), a metanarrative (cultural understanding of its ethos and reason for being), and methodology (how the discipline is advanced). As a result, there is a connection between what information literacy seeks and how disciplines do their work, in that disciplines advance their agendas through research. This makes it possible for librarians to meet faculty on the level of their own educational agendas, seeking to help them emphasize that the practice of teaching how to research must bear equal educational importance to content. While it remains difficult to implement and maintain, a program of enabling students to become effective disciplinarian researchers always trumps those same students merely absorbing content that will soon be obsolete.[10]
My own very fortunate association with Robert Farrell of Lehman College, City University of New York, has led to a model and potential practice for a collaborative approach that enables faculty to promote their own information literacy instruction through class assignment templates developed in concert with instruction librarians. This method encourages faculty to voice their own outcomes for information literacy and then be assisted by librarians to shape assignment templates that further those outcomes. All of this is guided by a theoretical approach to information literacy that takes disciplines seriously and recognizes that buy-in by faculty is essential.[11] We see this as the most sustainable future for information literacy.
While in Canada, as in most countries, information literacy instruction remains on the fringes of academic priority, there is no shortage of librarians who recognize that this is no time for territoriality and that enlisting academia as a whole in the task of creating strong student researchers is essential. It is at the heart of the Canadian ethos, after all, to be both
collaborative and persistent.
At my own institution, we have three disciplinary information literacy courses in operation, and our instruction librarians have been involved in the planning for both a new inquiry-based core curriculum and a learning commons which will include a teaching and learning center. Our nursing programs, using evidence-based methods, have had long-standing involvement with an instruction librarian who is seeking to enable professors to take a strong role in furthering student information literacy.
Future Visioning and Reflection
Canadian information literacy remains a practice without a central document to define it and without a central body to govern it. As such, its future could be at risk. There are voices, even within academia, who argue that the ubiquitous nature of information technology now enables everyone to do research without the intervention of librarians.[12] While librarians themselves remain hopeful of greater prominence given to instruction in the future,[13]
information literacy is by no means a priority in most institutions and is often advanced only through the vagaries of relationships with specific faculty or administrators. Rarely is it programmatically mandated.
There are, however, grounds for hope. First, the rise of information technology has not made the research task easier, but has instead added complexity to every aspect of information use. Second, the older knowledge-dissemination-through-lecture model of higher education is being challenged in a world in which there is ready access to information. This is leading more institutions to move toward project- or inquiry-based curricula which demand a stronger level of information literacy from students.
If there is to be a sustainable future for information literacy in Canada, first it will be faculty and academic administrators who will need to recognize that education is not simply knowledge acquisition but the development of strong abilities to enlist knowledge in discovery and
problem solving. Second, those faculty and administrators will have to grasp that, not only do students currently often lack the skills for the new forms of education, but that there is sound pedagogy available to them to enhance those skills.
Canadian librarians celebrate the words of Andrew Comper, president of the (Canadian) Bank of Montreal, to graduating students at the University of Toronto in 1999:
Whatever else you bring to the 21st century workplace, however great your technical skills and however attractive your attitude and however deep your commitment to excellence, the bottom line is that to be successful, you need to acquire a high level of information literacy. What we in the knowledge industries need are people who know how to absorb and analyze and integrate and create and effectively convey information—and who know how to use information to bring real value to everything they undertake.[14]
In the midst of a transforming educational environment in Canada, driven by technology and
